To-do cached add-on was designed to simplify developer’s tasks,
like debugging and code management. As a result of my work a Visual Studio
Add-on component was created. It makes some things easier.

Debugging Features

Main feature of Debugging is STL containers
expanding. This add-on supports debugging of such STL containers:

std::vector

std::list

std::map

std::multimap

std::set

std::multiset

Also special debugging
features were added they add support of very long strings to Visual C++
debugger. Add-on fixes Visual C++ Debugger limitation to string output.
(Visual C++ debugger can show only 242 symbols of the string). This Add-on
can expand very long strings (more than 65536 symbols):

CString (MFC Class)

std::string

BSTR and WCHAR*

bstr_t (COM support class)

char *

CComBSTR (ATL Class)

Add-on is also capable
of showing XML long strings with user friendly formatting/indenting. It
also supports quick find by simple string or RegExp (Regular Expressions).
In Find Dialog any part of the string can be copied to the system clipboard
for the future use of developer.

Code Management Features

Add-on
has special features which can be used to manage Visual C++ project source
code. In simple words it looks like:

Developer
adds a comment with special signature, like:

//
TODO:

after such keyword the task description could be written.
Add-on can support as many keywords as developer wants. The main advantage
of this Visual C++ add-on is that it parses comments. Add-on parses all
comments in source code, checks commented strings for needed keywords
and displays results. Add-on is capable of distinguishing comments of
two types // - single line and /*
- multi line comments. Each keyword used in Add-on must start from '//'
or '/*' symbols - if you want to parse comments
only, and from any other symbol if you want to parse full source code.

All
Results of parsing are cached and updated when developer save changes
to file. That is why add-on have name To-Do Cached. Results of
its work are printed into Macro tab of output window. Find
needed string in output window and make a double click on it to proceed
to that string in your source code. Add-on also understands multi line
comments written as a list of single line comments, example:

// TODO: -- start -- write code which do something special and with context and<br/> // and continue work -- end --

Add-on will interpret such comment as a long
one comment and will display it by one line. Results of work can be sorted
and filtered.

Toolbar look's like:

Show
Results

This is a first button in toolbar (direction from left to right). Press
this button to display results of keywords search in Macro tab
of output window. It’s a pity but I still don’t know how to
set active Macro tab on button press. That is why after press you
must change tab to Macro manually

Reparse
Workspace

Press this button to free the cache of add-on. Needed only when
there are too much files in workspace. Don’t open Option dialog
after that– according to add-on logic, it will have to parse the
workspace again to display statistics.

Options
Dialog

Some of the add-on’s features can be configured using Option Dialog.

Tabify
all files

On press add-on will automatically open all files in active project and
change all spaces in files to tabs.

Untabify
all files

Reverse process of Tabify action. Add-on will open all files of active
project and change all tabs to spaces.

STL
Debug Dialog

Open STL Debug Dialog of add-on. On
button press add-on will try to locate variable in currently opened source
file by selection or by cursor position.

Example of application tested with STL and C++ classes datatypes.

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Comments and Discussions

The purpose of add-on is to give developer standard style of comments and easy way to find them.
Let's look what is wrong with your suggestion:
- In any project must be added your defines
- Sources must be comiled first (F7 press)
- Hard to find comments in not own sources, which doesn't use you defines
- #pragma can be a little specific to other compilers

Add-on can find not only written in articale comments. It can be easaly configured to find any keyword.
How about find all #define's derectives in all projects in workspace, with comments? It will be hard tasks to your suggestion.

That is why I recommend to use my add-on. It can help anyone who want to use it. It's not fully finish for today, that is why it's opened to any suggestions.

Don't mean to show you up, but... This plugin requires MSDEV. You're more than likely programming in C/C++. Why, then, would a #PRAGMA directive be a problem? Unless you're planning on moving to another compiler, #pragmas are fine. And besides, they are not processed unless the compiler understands them. So, if you prepended those macros with a "a_" or something like that, there'd be no confusion, and you wouldn't get any errors anyway.